Monday, December 22, 2008

The snowiest fall since 1951 (3rd snowiest ever) with below average temperatures

With 96 cm of snow, the fall of 2008 ranks as the third snowiest fall since records in the area began back in 1915 (the two snowiest were 1950 with 114.5 cm and 1951 with 105.5 cm). However what we got as snow we didn't get as rain, so the total precipitation of 250.4 mm puts it just barely above the average range.

Looking at the temperature, there were a couple of warmer than average periods during late September and early October. But after reaching 20 °C in early November the temperature was consistently lower than average for the rest of the season. Even though overall it was only 0.7 °C colder than the average, it still ranks as the coldest fall in the 10 year history of the UW weather station.

Summary for Fall 2008:

Maximum Temperature 26.2 °C

Minimum Temperature -18.8 °C

Average Daily High Temperature 7.9 °C (Long term average 8.5 °C)

Average Daily Low Temperature -1.1 °C (Long term average -0.3 °C)

Total Precipitation 250.4 mm (Long term average 222.5 mm)

(Long term averages based on 1971-2000 data for the Waterloo Wellington Airport)

Follow this link to see the graph showing the temperature and precipitation:

Monday, December 1, 2008

It isn’t very hard to see when the weather changed this November, after a few days that were close to 20 °C in the first week and a high of 8 °C on the 15th, the temperature went south and never again got above 2.5 °C. The contrast between the two halves of the month can clearly be seen in the temperature graph (see the link below); as well you can see the period near the end of the month when the temperature hovered around 0 for almost 4 days.

Overall the month was 0.8 degrees below average, this is a bit warmer than last year’s November when it was 0.9 degrees below average. However, the daily highs were actually colder this year than they were last year, but the daily lows were warmer making the overall average temperature a bit warmer.

Another month of above average precipitation with 115.0 mm coming down compared to the average of 82.3 mm. Most of this occurred between the 14th and 16th (48.8 mm), during the transition between the warm and cold parts of the month.

A total of 1023.2 mm of precipitation has been recorded so far this year, which is of course well above the average of 835.6 mm. We have now had the 3rd highest precipitation for the first 11 months of any year since records in the area began back in 1915.

It will however be difficult to end up with the wettest year on record, to do this we would need 163 mm in December to overtake 1985 and 151 mm to come in second just ahead of 1940. To put this into perspective the highest total precipitation for the month of December was 139.7 mm in 1949.